


A Faint Hum

by juliesioux



Series: Exploring the Future [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Arrow - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Arrow - Freeform, Arrow Speculation fic, Coma, F/M, Fear, Injury, Love, Olicity Secret Santa, Olicity Secret Santa 2015, One Shot, POV Felicity Smoak, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:04:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5488115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliesioux/pseuds/juliesioux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We find Felicity, after the conclusion of episode 4x09, grievously injured. How does she find her way back to life after possibly being in a coma for a period of time. What gives her strength and draws her back to life? Where does she find her courage and resolve?</p><p>This fic explores the fractured inner space of Felicity's mind as she struggles to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Faint Hum

 

_The pinpoint of light in the velvet dark_  
_started to grow_  
_and she dove headfirst_  
_into the void_

A warm breeze blew softly across Felicity, ruffling her hair and causing goosebumps to raise up on her skin. She slowly became aware of something tickling her legs, something that was gritty and grainy. She didn’t want to move from the warm bed she was in but the breeze was starting to chill her. Oliver must have opened a window downstairs because the ones in their bedroom were sealed shut. Felicity reached for the blankets but grasped only air.

 _That’s odd,_ she thought sleepily, _if Oliver took them AND opened a window, I will kill him. Unless he has made me pancakes, then I’ll only narrow my eyes at him. Oh who am I kidding, I’ll kiss him like he it is my job._

Felicity opened her eyes and saw golden sand stretching off into every direction. The dunes appeared to go on forever, rolling in endless waves on all sides of her. She sat up and immediately tumbled down the side of the dune she had been resting on.

A fist of panic took hold of her stomach and clenched down hard as she looked around trying to figure out where she was. She had absolutely no memory of how she got to the desert. One minute she was with Oliver (staring into the endless blue of his eyes and dreaming soft dreams of a joined future) and the next she was here.

 _But where was here?_ She wondered with rising alarm. _There is no way I could just suddenly be in a desert without some idea of how or why I got here._

The sky above her was a deep azure blue without a cloud in sight. The sun blazed down on her with an almost reckless abandon. Something about this place was... _wrong_ , but she couldn’t put her finger on just what that _wrong_ was.

There was a persistent wind that slowly uncovered a loose line of rocks and pebbles at her feet. She followed the ill-defined path over dunes of coarse, gritty sand under the unrelenting hot sun. The wind moved the sun-baked beige sand, threatening to obscure the shadow of a path in front of her, which would leave her profoundly lost in a world of sand and sky.

She feared that the sun would be her constant companion in this lonely landscape where the horizon shimmered in the distance with wave after wave of superheated air because she had yet to see any other signs of life.

 _Seriously,_ she thought to herself, _the path wasn’t even a path. It was like an afterthought of mislaid stones. How am I supposed to find my way back if I can’t find the path? And where am I finding my way back to? Where exactly is here? It had better not be Nanda Par-fracking-bat._

The hazy blue sky held no answers for her and the sun had barely moved in the sky the entire time she had been awake in this strange, inhospitable world.

“Ya know, if there was a second sun I would believe I was on Tatooine. Which I would prefer to this neverending beige. At least there would be the promise of Jawas or Boba-freaking-fett!” she yelled at the oppressively blue sky.

Then from out of nowhere, she heard a hint of a soft voice, _“..........path………...exit……..”_

Spinning around in a full circle, she frantically searched who was speaking but the voice faded away faster than she could search the blinding horizon. Sound traveled in waves out here, so as soon as it rolled over her, it was gone, leaving no echoes for her to hold onto.

“OLIVER?” She called.

 _Please, let that have been him,_ she despairs. _I don’t know where I am and I don’t know what is going on. Oliver, please, come find me..._

She stumbled on for what felt like hours, following the sun’s path as it slowly dropped towards the distant, hazy horizon. She felt her lips beginning to crack from the dry, hot air. Her eyes felt gritty and she knew her nose was a bright, angry red because it always turned red in the sun.

“This has to be a dream,” she croaked out of her parched throat, “there is no way I can just magically be in a desert after being in Star City...doing…”

But she couldn’t remember what she had been doing prior to waking up on top of the sand dune. She remembered Oliver. The feel of his lips against hers, the warmth of his breath on her skin and the way his hand felt in hers.

“Oliver,” she quietly cried, “where are you? Where am I?”

Suddenly, she was so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open, all she wanted to do was rest so she sought out a patch of shade at the base of a tall dune and laid down. As sleep crept up and claimed her, she heard a faint humming but before she could figure out the tune, she sank into sleep’s embrace.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_“...What…”_

_“Here….”_

_“Is she…...when…...home.”_

_“Felicity....you……...I……..you…..”_

_The voices batted at her as she slept. She reached for the one that spoke her name but her hand slipped through the cracks and crevices of the voice. She couldn’t figure out who it belonged to but it was deep, husky, masculine, and familiar. She just needed to hold onto something that she knew, something that reminded her of who she was…_

_“...will...pain…”_

_The voice sped past her as though trying to drag her back to wakefulness but all she could do was mourn its passing._

_“.......but...will……….me.”_

_She silently begged the voice to stay with her but knew it would leave her to the desert’s mercy._

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She awoke with a powerful thirst. She couldn’t even create enough saliva in her mouth to lick her lips.

 _Maybe it rained overnight,_ she muses, _maybe there will be a vending machine full of cold water right next to me and it will take promises as payment. I’ll probably have to suck on a rock or drain the blood from a lizard instead with my luck._

She pried her eyes open and tried to focus on where she was and if the sand dune had shifted away from her as it felt like she was no longer next to it but still in its shadow.

The sky was full of strangely shaped clouds and they seemed to be moving in an odd way, like they were shifting in circular shapes without the benefit of atmosphere or wind.

 _Maybe a storm is coming,_ she thought with some excitement, _maybe a storm is coming and it will rain and rain and I can just open my mouth and let the rain in._

Something soft brushed past her face, something soft and cool, causing her to snap fully awake.

 _That felt like a hand,_ she thought, _that felt like a woman’s hand! On my face!_

Scrambling to her feet, Felicity looked wildly around her, searching for the source of the touch. All she saw was dense green foliage and trees.

_Wait. TREES? Where am I now? she sighed. Only in this weird dreamland could I fall asleep in the desert and wake up in the forest but where there is green, there is blue. Water must be somewhere close by!_

Rubbing the last of the sandy sleep from her eyes, Felicity took in the lush, dense, wet green that surrounded her. She heard the soft bubbling sound of water running fast over rocks coming from somewhere close by and almost dropped to her knees in joy and relief.

 _If I could yell, I would,_ she thinks, _I am about to find the world’s biggest water fountain. Once I dunk my entire body into it, I’ll stop and think about what is going on here. I know I am dreaming but this dreambody needs a bath and a drink._

Carefully, she picked her way through the underbrush and wound her way through the ferns. It was so beautiful here, like nothing she had ever seen. There were flowers the colour of the sky, and ones so white they seemed to radiate a faint blue, there were tiny ones that smelled like sweet jasmine and ones that reminded her of honeysuckle but the blooms were purple and as large as her head.

Everywhere she looked, she saw something otherworldly yet familiar. It didn’t unnerve her like the endless desert did, this place felt a bit safer to her. There would be places for her to bed down at night if need be and there was water. She could deal with finding food later, right now the call of the stream was loud in her ears and it was all she could think about.

The path she found was barely recognizable as a path. It was merely a slight sway in the underbrush, as though the ferns and grasses has learned to lean ever so slightly apart. _Oliver would be so proud of me,_ she thought with a gentle smile, _his survival techniques are rubbing off on me. I can find my way out of the wilderness because of him._

The stream was only a few hundred metres from where she had woken up. She followed the sound and the rich emollient smell of it. It was so alive and real! If she could strip while running, she would have been naked so that she could dive right in.

The morning mist had yet to completely burn away from the forest floor so she didn’t so much find the stream as it rose up out of the ground to meet her. She quickly shed her clothes and underwear and waded into the slow moving current. The water was smooth and cool against her skin and that first moment, after she had thrown all caution to the wind and dove beneath its placid surface and the water had lapped over her head, she had felt reborn. She had felt cleansed and renewed.

Holding onto a rock to anchor herself, she let the current wash over her and lift her body up off the stream bed. It was so tempting to let go and just float away. She didn’t know where here was, so floating away into the unknown would maybe lead her back to the known. It would fit the definition of how she defined her existence to freely choose to let go and allow the current to carry her for this part of her absurd journey.

“Whoah now, Ms Smoak,” she muttered to herself, “don’t be getting all existential, just try to find your way home before joining up with Sartre in existentialism heaven.”

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back into the current so that it blocked all sound and cleared her thoughts. It was a trick Oliver had taught her when they were in Phuket one night when her dreams were plagued by apocalyptic visions of death where they had failed to save Starling from the Alpha/Omega virus and she found herself wading through the streets filled with rotting corpses and screaming children.

The meditation trick had saved her many times since the first time she had used it and had served to deepen the bond that she and Oliver shared. It was his voice that guided her now, his face she saw when she closed her eyes. It was him that she was struggling to get back to and she wasn’t going to do that drifting aimlessly in the stream.

Before making her way carefully back up to the forest floor, Felicity drank mouthfuls of the cleanest water she had ever tasted and redressed herself in her still faintly dusty clothes. These small, human acts were anchoring her to herself she would not get lost in the dream reality her mind had created. It was time to follow the stream and see where it was truly leading her and if Oliver was somewhere at the end of that path.

Along the way, she picked random flowers and made a garland to wear. All the flowers she picked smelled like roses or carnations but the blooms were so different than their botanic originals. She tried to commit them to memory so that she could track them down in a flower dictionary when she returned home.

She quickly lost track of time as she walked. She was trying to piece together where she really was outside of the dream by her last memory which was of Oliver. Oliver and his large gentle hands, the weight of his body pressing down on her, the way his lips felt on hers, the rising heat of passion kept at bay until they were alone…

“Oliver, where are you? Why haven’t you come to find me?” she asked the six foot tall fern she had decided to sit under to catch her breath. “You never leave me like this unless something is wrong. So what is it? Are you in trouble with Lance? Did Darhk really do a number on you? Are you trying to protect me? Again? We can work through this together, Oliver.”

She waited for the fern to say something back to her. _Plants always spoke to me in my dreams like I am Alice in Wonderland,_ she thought, _so maybe the fern can share some botanical wisdom, maybe it could channel Oliver for just a moment so that I can stop feeling so desperately alone._

When nothing was forthcoming, she sighed and prepared to get up and continue on her way when she felt something bite her arm.

If there was one thing in the world Felicity hated it was bugs. Especially biting ones and the last thing she wanted was to be bitten by any mosquitoes. _What if it was a COCKROACH!?!_ she thought in a fast building panic.

Screaming, she tried to stand up but was swatting at the air, at her body and she fell back into the tall ferns and bushes. Her absolute terror at being bitten by a cockroach sent her headlong into a panic so intense that she failed to feel the hard snap of the fern as it snapped back onto her or the way the tall grass seemed to wrap around her arms in an effort to hold her.

“WAKE UP, FELICITY!” She screamed at herself, “WAKE UP!”

She felt the sting of another bite and darkness descended over her taking her down into its depths.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_“.......wound……..heal it’s……...soon.”_

_“She…...awake……….gently…”_

_The voices prodded her. They were like fingers reaching into her mind, trying locate her and bring her back to where she was real, back to where she was herself._

_She felt a small breath of cool air on her face and heard a faint click. All around her was the sound of humming. It was a peaceful sound that reverberated through her and brought her a great sense of peace and contentment._

_She took a deep breath and sighed but a sadness rose up in her chest. She missed Oliver. She missed the feel of his hand in her’s, the way he smiled at her for no reason at all, the way he took up so much room in her heart and she loved him with every part of her. She imagined she could feel him holding her hand, his breath on her fingers, his lips pressing into her palm and her soul cried out to him because she feared that when she opened her eyes, she would be alone and the emptiness that feeling brought crippled her._

_“...Felicity….honey, I….where…...to me.”_

_“Please…...d…...eave…...baby, I……..lo….”_

_The voice had grown harder to hear the further she drifted. Her hand felt wet but there was nothing she could do to check why. The darkness was fast approaching and the humming had grown louder._

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_her spirit grew weaker_  
_and her resolve grew fainter_  
_so she was able_  
_to step between the beats_  
_of her heart_

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She woke up with a start. Her hands flew immediately to her chest which hurt. It burned like someone had lit her on fire and she hurt everywhere like someone had stepped all over her while wearing boots. She ached from every joint and her heart felt sluggish in her chest.

She opened her eyes to a sky that appeared overcast but wasn’t. She looked around to see what kind of landscape she was in this time and found herself laying on wet sand. There were ripples in the sand and it shone silvery white in the strange light but there was no water lapping at her feet.

She was surrounded by nothingness on all sides. The horizons shone like polished silver, offering up no clue as to what they hid. She stood still and waited. She closed her eyes and listened to the blank world around her, hoping to hear something on the light breeze that was blowing around her.

All she heard was a gentle hum. _Maybe that is the sound the world makes as it spins madly on,_ she thought mournfully, _or maybe it is like Carl Sagan said, ‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’._

Tears slid down her cheeks unheeded. She had not felt this alone in her entire life. Not even after her dad left her and her mom that dark night so long ago in Las Vegas. Or when Oliver left to go fight Ra’s on top of the mountain or when Al Sahim had turned his back on her in the bowels of Nanda Parbat.

All she wanted was to wake up and see Oliver in bed next to her. She couldn’t take another climb up to wakefulness only to discover she was locked deep within her own mind. The pain of separation, the desolation of spirit she felt was weakening her resolve. This needed to be over.

_“Felicity...I’m here…” whispered Oliver._

_Wait! I can hear him! He’s somewhere out there!_  
“OLIVER! I can hear you! Where are you?” She called out.

_“Felicity, we….wake up….you,” he whispered. His voice was growing stronger and with it her resolve. He was with her, he was nearby and if she could find him, she could return home._

Felicity walked towards the direction she thought Oliver’s voice was coming from and if she could just figure out once and for all where that was, maybe she could get him to hear her.

The diffused light that surrounded her was growing dimmer.

 _No. No, no, no, no, no!_ She despaired. _It’s too soon! I just woke up! I need to find him!_

The silvery edges of the impermanent world began to push inward and a faint humming could be heard at the very edge of her hearing. The sky grew hazier and all she could do was wail in frustration before the light was gone and she was pulled into nothingness maybe forever.

_“Felicity, come back….I….take you….us.”_

Oliver’s voice sounded strange to her ears. He sounded like he was barely holding on to his sanity. She wanted nothing more than to reach out and cradle his cheek, to touch him, to trace his smile, to feel the warmth of his kiss and to breathe him in.

 _“Oliver, please wait for me. I will find my way back to you,”_ she whispered into the gathering haze.

_“Felicity, I love you,” Oliver whispered to her, “please come back.”_

She knew he was crying. She could hear the hollow ache in his voice, the way each word was infused with its own universe of suffering and it killed her that she was the reason why he was in such profound pain.

“I’m sorry, OIiver,” she whispered, “I’m coming. I promise.”

She sank to the ground, ignoring the wet sand, too tired to remain on her feet. Darkness gathered close around her and patiently coaxed her back into its embrace. Felicity felt its gossamer wings close around her and she surrendered to the inky black nothingness.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a ball of light above her. It held no heat but its light was pure white and steady. It would move from side to side but remained a constant presence in orbit around her.

There were soft clicks and whirls and the sound of forced air coming from somewhere above her head. She couldn’t open her eyes, but she knew she was in an actual bed. Wherever her mind had taken her, it at least had built a bed for her. No more sleeping in sand or on a forest floor. She was in a bed, covered by a blanket with a pillow under her head.

She tried blinking to see if she could open her eyes with gentle encouragement but they were firmly stuck together. She found that she no longer had the strength to try and force them open, in fact she was exhausted and her chest still hurt.

She felt the gathering dark approaching again and reluctantly allowed it to take her back into its embrace. Her last waking thought was of a searing pain in her chest and an echoing heartbeat.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_slipping_  
_she was slipping_  
_away_  
_but she refused to go_  
_so she reached out_  
_and dug her fingers_  
_into the walls of her life and she held on_  
_and on_  
_and she held on_

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 _That damn light was back,_ she grumbled.

It was angled so that it seemed to be trying to force its way into her eyes. All it was doing was blowing her world up in pulsating tones of red. There was too much sound and the sheets she was laying on top of were scratchy and hard.

She felt trapped. Especially her left hand. It felt like a rock was sitting on it. A bristly rock.

 _How can a rock be bristly?_ She wondered. _And soft. No, not soft...fleshy. It feels fleshy and that is just wrong. Rocks should NEVER feel like this. EVER._

Felicity tried to open her eyes, this time succeeding in getting them open just a tiny bit and she saw machines. So many machines with wires leading to her body. She saw the light that was causing so much grief. It was over her head, too far to reach, and it was relentlessly on. She could hardly wait to turn it off.

Looking down, in the few seconds of consciousness she had left, she saw Oliver. He was sleeping with his head on her hand. He looked so peaceful. So young. He had lines forming around his eyes that she loved, but as he slept they no longer creased his skin.

 _I found you,_ she thought as the ever present dark reached for her again, _I found you_.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_she no longer tumbled_  
_through the darkness_  
_without direction_  
_she had found her anchor_  
_she had found her anchor_

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This time when she surfaced, she hung on for as long as she could. She needed to see Oliver and for him to see her.

She felt his hand on hers. The calloused, warmth of it was reassuring and familiar. He was lightly tracing circles with his thumb on her knuckles and humming quietly under his breath.

 _When did he start doing that?_ She wondered. _I don’t know that I have ever heard him doing that before but he is awake now._

With that, Felicity forced her eyes to open a fraction of an inch. She tried to speak but found her throat obstructed by a tube.

Panic seized her as her memory returned to her in a blinding flash.

_The limo._

They had been in the back of a limo celebrating the proposal three months in the making, when Darhk’s men had opened fire and killed their driver...and almost her.

She had been shot. Maybe more than once, she couldn’t tell in the opiate haze she was struggling to raise herself out of.

Her hand jerked, trying to free itself from Oliver’s, because all she wanted was to drag the tube out of her throat and scream her anguish and horror out of her body.

Oliver’s attention snapped back to her where she saw momentary relief in his beautiful blue eyes before it was replaced by panic and alarm.

The moment she had hoped for was lost in a flurry of blue garbed nursed, white coated doctors and pain.

This time she sought out the dark and pulled it into her embrace.

______________________________________________________________________

 _the star that held up her sky_  
_pinned her dreams to the heavens_  
_all she needed to do_  
_was chase it_  
_to her journey’s end_  
______________________________________________________________________

 

She wasn’t fully awake yet so she used his gentle humming as a beacon and followed it. Cautiously, she cast her consciousness outward, trying to feel her body. It was with overwhelming relief that she found her throat clear of the tube.

 _I must be breathing on my own now,_ she thought weakly, _hooray for small measures, I guess._

“Oliver,” she whispered in a hoarse voice, “Oliver…”  
“Hey,” came his reassuring voice, “I’m here, I’m here.”

With a trembling hand, she reached out blindly for him. She wasn’t sure if she had the strength to open her eyes, but she needed to feel his hand in hers. His presence infused her with comfort and strength.

“I found you,” she whispered.  
“You did.”  
“I was so lost without you.”  
“I’ll never leave you,” he said quietly, afraid she would hear the tremor in his voice if he spoke too loudly.  
“I searched everywhere for you.”  
“I never left your side.”

Finally, she was able to crack open her left eye just a bit. Before falling back into the silent darkness, she wanted to see his face to know he was truly there. His handsome face was sporting a large bruise under his right eye and a split bottom lip. But his eyes were shining with love and she could have sworn that, for just a moment, she could see the promise of forever in them.

“Liar,” she snorted with great effort, “but I forgive you. We can talk about if those bruises are the result of Oliver Queen’s Awesome Decision Making Skills later.”

Oliver huffed out a laugh and pressed a gentle kiss to the palm of her left hand. Seconds later Felicity fell asleep again, she would be doing a lot of that in the coming weeks the doctors had advised. She was slowly climbing the steep path out of her coma and back into the world.

_She had found him even though she had been trapped on the other side of consciousness, thinking she had lost me, he mused, when he was the one who was truly lost without her._

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as a gift for the 2015 Olicity Secret Santa gift exchange :)


End file.
